Author: marinscienceseminar

The Biology of Heart Development and Congenital Heart Defects

with Irfan Kathiriya M.D. Ph.D of UCSF

• Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
• Time: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
• Place: Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub [map], 320 Nova Albion, San Rafael

Description: Dr. Kathiriya will introduce how the human heart develops from a simple tube into a complex four-chambered organ during early pregnancy. He’ll discuss congenital heart disease, which affects about 1% of newborns and represents one of the most common and life-limiting birth defects. Then, he will present recent discoveries on how specific genes control the organization of heart cells during development, and how disruptions in these genetic programs contribute to congenital heart defects. This research provides new insights into why some babies are born with heart problems and may lead to improved treatments and diagnostic approaches in the future.

Bio: Dr. Kathiriya is a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist who cares for patients at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco and Oakland, and Professor of Anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco. He is part of a team that cares for patients born with heart defects needing surgery. In the laboratory, Dr. Kathiriya’s research uses experimental genetics and data science—including disease modeling with human pluripotent stem cells, cell lineage tracing with mouse genetics, and genomics—to understand how the developing heart forms properly and what goes wrong in congenital heart disease. His goal is to uncover insights from the laboratory to improve the natural course of congenital heart disease for patients and their families.

Links:

• Dr. Kathiriya at UCSF Profiles
• Irfan Kathiriya at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals
• Mentoring at The Gladstone Institute

How Local Government Works to Solve Environmental Problems

with Daniel Meer of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District

• Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2026
• Time: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
• Place: Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub [map], 320 Nova Albion, San Rafael

Description: Everybody knows what air pollution is. Remember when particles of soot from wild fires blocked out the sun a few years ago? In tonight’s presentation and discussion we will explore how the Bay Area Air District works to keep the air healthy for everybody. It takes a combination of good governance, sound science, detailed and rigorous policy and planning and unrelenting implementation. Please join us for a civics and science lesson.

Bio: Daniel Meer trained as a geologist and, prior to his federal service, spent ten years in the private sector doing petroleum geology. Over his 31-year EPA career Daniel implemented environmental statutes and regulations, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund), the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act and the National Contingency Plan at staff and management levels up to Assistant Director (GS15). He managed EPA Region 9’s Emergency Response and Preparedness program and responded to numerous oil spills, chemical releases and man-made and natural disasters, including the 9/11 terrorist attack, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, Cosco Busan oil spill and California wildfires. Dan retired from the EPA in 2020 and began working at the Bay Area Air District where he works on a variety of projects related to government outreach and organizational development.

Links:

• Bay Area Air Quality Management District

with Paloma Siegel (TLHS MSEL ’18), PhD candidate at University of Colorado Boulder

• Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2026
• Time: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
• Place: Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub [map], 320 Nova Albion, San Rafael

Description: What does it take to study glaciers in the mountains of Alaska? What do we learn about the climate from glacial ice? Paloma will share her path towards becoming an ice core scientist and explore the lessons we can learn from water molecules. Her talk will connect water isotopes to past temperature and atmospheric circulation in Southeast Alaska and broadly focus on melt-impacted mountain glaciers.

Bio: I am a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder currently studying water isotope dynamics in a temperate alpine ice core drilled on the Juneau Icefield, in Alaska. I grew up in San Rafael and graduated from Terra Linda High School (and MSEL) in 2018. In 2023, I received my BA in Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Through my current work with Dr. Markle and the Stable Isotope Lab (SIL), I combine modeling with snow and ice data to examine temperature and climate variability trends across surface samples and deep ice core data. I am interested in melt impacted glaciers in mountainous regions. In my spare time I like to ice climb, ski, rock climb, and do yoga!

Links:

• Paloma Siegel at U. of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research
• Paloma Siegel at Alaska Guide

with Taren Bouwman (TLHS MSEL ’16), Ph.D. candidate at University of Hawai’i Manoa

• Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
• Time: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
• Place: Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub [map], 320 Nova Albion, San Rafael

Description: Fungi are some of the most fascinating and overlooked organisms on Earth. In this talk, we’ll explore these hidden heroes and how the opportunities they have for carbon sequestration and the development of a sustainable and circular economy.

Bio: Taren is a PhD candidate studying the unique relationships between fungi and algae, with the goal of advancing mycology and developing innovative methods for carbon sequestration. He has been a member of the Du Lab since 2024. Before graduate school, Taren worked in the research division at BioMarin, contributing to Roctavian: one of the first approved gene therapies. He is also a graduate of the Marin School of Environmental Leadership (MSEL) at Terra Linda High School.

Links:

• Taren Bouwman at Google Scholar
• Du Lab at University of Hawai’i

Marin Science Seminar presentation:

NEW DATE!

“Brain Medicine: Bridging the divide between Psychiatry and Neurology” with Ellen Bradley M.D. of UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

Wednesday, March 25, 2026 * 7:30-8:30pm * Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub, San Rafael, CA

Dr. Ellen Bradley will share her journey to becoming a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCSF, where she now bridges the divide between psychiatry and neurology through innovative research. Dr. Bradley will explain how she studies neuropsychiatric disorders. She’ll discuss the technical aspects of her clinical trials, which investigate how the brain’s chemistry interacts with movement and mood disorders. Students will learn about the field of psychopharmacology and how modern brain medicine requires understanding both the biological mechanisms of psychiatric symptoms and the neurological systems that control movement, attention, and cognition. Join us and Learn!  

Bio: Ellen Bradley, MD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), lead psychiatrist for the Parkinson’s disease Research, Education, and Clinical Center (PADRECC) at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, and associate director of the UCSF translational psychedelic research (TrPR) program. Her goal is to advance effective, multidisciplinary care for people living with neuropsychiatric disorders through clinical practice and research. She uses mechanistic clinical trials to understand the effects of psychoactive drugs and their potential as treatments for illnesses that span the psychiatry-neurology divide, including Parkinson’s disease (PD). Dr. Bradley leads the TrPR program’s studies focused on neurodegenerative disorders.

Links:

• Ellen Bradley M.D. at UCSF
• UCSF Neuromodulation Imaging Lab
• at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

Marin Science Seminar presents:

“Creepy or Captivating: A Spider Scientist’s Perspective” with Trinity Walls, Ph.D. candidate, UC Berkeley

Wednesday, October 1, 2025; 7:30-8:30pm; Terra Linda High School Innovation Hub, San Rafael, California

Description: Modern media tend to portray spiders as eight-legged, multi-eyed terrors. With deeper exposure and open minds, can we come to see the beauty and benefits of our arachnid aquaintances? UC Berkeley scientist Trinity Walls thinks so. Trinity will share her journey to becoming an arachnologist (a spider scientist), and will discuss her research on the mating and communication behaviors of jumping spiders. Along the way she will address arachnophobia, and try to convey the beauty and benefits of spiders in our lives.

Bio: Trinity Walls is a PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley studying how mate choice patterns shift over time and how these shifts affect hybridization. She is originally from North Carolina and has always been fascinated by spiders. The more she learned about them, the more she realized much of the widely circulated information about them was false and so she sought to study them herself. Trinity has studied orb-weavers in Puerto Rico, wolf spiders during her Masters in Ohio, and now jumping spiders at Berkeley. She is happiest when she is in the field searching for spiders, conversing with her lab members, and engaging in outreach activities.

Links:

• Trinity Walls at Wonderfest
• UC Berkeley Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
• NPR article about the growing popularity of jumping spiders as pets (Sept. 29, 2025)

Marin Science Seminar presentation:

“Alexa, Astro, and Nova, Oh my! The science of tuning virtual assistants”

with Camden Pettijohn (TLHS ’18) of Amazon

Wed. October 15, 2025, 7:30-8:30pm, Terra Linda HS Innovation Hub

This talk will discuss what happens behind the scenes of Amazon’s voice technology development, exploring how the folks behind Alexa, etc. optimize virtual assistants for real-world performance. It will introduce the benchmarking of automatic speech recognition (ASR) from the familiar Alexa to the newer Nova Sonic model. Attendees will hear about how Amazon’s simulation labs recreate authentic acoustic environments—complete with background TV noises, among other varying sound conditions—to test and refine virtual assistant capabilities under realistic use cases. The presentation will discuss accessibility features, including adaptive speech recognition, in addition to practical applications. Through concrete examples of acoustic engineering challenges and solutions, this talk reveals some of the science behind making virtual assistants not just functional, but accessible and reliable in the diverse environments where people actually use them.

Camden Pettijohn graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2022 with a B.S. in Computer Science. That same year, he was hired by Amazon Labs to work on benchmarking Alexa Speech Recognition and LLM (Large Language Model) modalities. Prior to that, he was a game development intern at the UC Davis Sing Lab and a director of the Game Development and Arts Club (GDAC). Camden has years of experience writing code, making video games, drawing art, and more. He is also a former Marin Science Seminar intern and a graduate of Terra Linda High School (2018)!

Links:

• Camden’s website
• LinkedIn

Upcoming talk: “The Biology of Consciousness: an anesthesiologist explores the circuits behind our mental states” Wed. Sept. 24, 2025 with Art Wallace, M.D. Ph.D. of UCSF and VAMC SF

One of the great mysteries of neuroscience is how the brain creates conscious experiences. Over the last 2,500 years scientists have worked to understand much of anatomy, physiology, and how the brain works. Neuroanatomy and neuro-control are well understood. Input-output functions of the brain have been mapped, including sensory, motor, and autonomic systems. Modern tools have revealed many neural circuits, and we are starting to understand the effects of some of these circuits on mental illness.

Nonetheless, the neuroanatomic center of consciousness remains elusive. We aren’t even really sure how to measure or what constitutes consciousness. How does an anesthesiologist, who routinely eliminates and then restores consciousness, define and measure consciousness? Mathematical models are commonly used to generate and test hypothesis; can we create a mathematical model of consciousness? Would this model help us to understand how the brain creates it? Dr. Wallace will discuss the beginnings of a simple model of consciousness from a neuroscience and engineering perspective.

Art Wallace is one of the founders of the Marin Science Seminar. He is a cardiac anesthesiologist, Professor Emeritus and Vice-chairman of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at the University of California San Francisco, and Chief of Anesthesia at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dr. Wallace has developed medications, surgical procedures, medical devices, and medical informatics software.

Previous Talks by Art Wallace at MSS:

• Human Hibernation: Is it Possible for Space Flight? (Feb. 5, 2025)
• Machine Vision for Medical Monitoring (Apr. 26, 2023)
• COVID-19 and Long COVID: Rapidly Developing Therapies for a New Disease (Nov. 30, 2022)
• Big Data and Medical Innovation” (Oct. 11, 2017 & Feb. 11, 2015)

Descriptions for the following talks can all be found at this link.

• Invention in Medicine: How Medical Devices get Invented and Go to Market (Oct. 26, 2016; Feb. 16, 2011; Dec. 10, 2008)
• Making Medicine Safer with Drugs, Devices, Software & More (Oct. 23, 2013)
• Computers, Robots, and Medical Education, Oh My! (Dec. 5, 2012)
• Developing a Drug to Prevent Death!: Perioperative Beta Blockade (Mar. 19, 2008)

with Art Wallace, M.D. Ph.D., UCSF and VA Medical Center, San Francisco

WHEN?: Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 – TLHS Innovation Hub – 7:30 – 8:30pm

Description: Sci-Fi movies often depict hibernation as the secret to long-duration human spaceflight. (Note: Even with ideal starship acceleration and deceleration — AND with the benefit of relativistic effects — the nearest exoplanet is 3.6 YEARS away!) Of course, the boundary between science fiction and science fantasy is hazy. Advances in anesthesia may facilitate hibernation. Physiologically, however, general anesthesia is detrimental in the short term, and worse in the long term. Will long-spaceflight medical advances ever be able to deal with this sobering hibernation fact that roughly half of naturally-hibernating animals never revive? Join us to find out. Bring your questions and your curiosity!

Bio: Art Wallace, M.D, Ph.D is a cardiac anesthesiologist, professor and vice-chairman of anesthesiology and perioperative care at the University of California San Francisco, and Chief of Anesthesia at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dr Wallace has developed medications, surgical procedures, medical devices, and medical informatics software.

Links:

• Dr. Wallace at UCSF Anesthesia
• ResearchGate
• #TheManTheMythTheLegend
• Dr. Wallace’s previous Marin Science Seminar talks

with Jackie Galvez, Ph.D. candidate, UC Berkeley

WHEN?: Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 – TLHS Innovation Hub – 7:30 – 8:30pm

Description: Humans impact ecosystems in a variety of ways, with urbanization, climate change, and infrastructure projects posing unique challenges organisms must overcome. In freshwater river systems, human-made dams pose major risks to endangered fish species, disrupting habitats in many ways. Jackie Galvez’s research investigates the influence of damming on one important aspect of fish biology: anatomy. By using museum collections to study fish body shape and skeletal anatomy, we can better understand how fish adapt to human influences, better informing conservation efforts for California native species. Bring your questions and your curiosity!

Bio: Jackie Galvez is an ichthyologist (fish biologist) studying the impacts of artificial dam barriers upon body shape and skull anatomy in endangered steelhead trout. More broadly, Jackie is interested in anthropogenic influences upon trophic ecology (diet) and morphology (anatomy) of fish living in human-impacted environments. She interned for the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, where she conducted her senior thesis research and learned collection management, and also conducted an independent research project on cichlid evolutionary relationships as a National Science Foundation intern at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Jackie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Loyola Marymount University, where she researched invasive plant presence at a Los Angeles urban park (Ascot Hills), the impacts of warming temperatures on California black walnut seeds, and conducted an anatomical comparison of rodent skulls in polluted versus non-polluted locations in Southern California. Currently she is working on her Ph.D. in Dr. Jack Tseng’s FAVE lab at UC Berkeley’s department of Integrative Biology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ).

Links:

• FAVE Lab at UC Berkeley
• Jacquelyn R. Galvez at Google Scholar